Home is Where My Broken Heart is
by emilyissad
Summary: Mycroft has had enough of bailing out his little brother and is dragging him home for an intervention. But home is where the people closest to you come back to haunt you, and there are plenty of ghosts in the Holmes house. Really quite sad, dunno what the hell I was thinking lol...
1. Found

The holidays are here. But I'm not in Miami soaking up the sun or snuggled up in some Disney cartoon chalet. I'm in an abandoned block of flats bounds to collapse any minute with 7% solution surging through my veins hidden under grey sweats. Enchanting, no? This is where I'm meant to be. Surrounded by equal freaks to me. No social niceties or fake handshakes and 'pleased to meet you's'. We're all here for one reason and that is to get wasted without the marionette strings of disapproving stares. It's all rather relaxing. Apart from the sirens.

I know that Greg Lestrade's Tuesday Drugs Bust is currently barrelling down the streets surrounding my sanctuary from all angles. I look at my watch; 12:31, they'll be here in 2 minutes and thirteen seconds, I estimate. I put out my fag on the graffiti'd cement wall and kick my remaining stash behind a tile, casting a warning glance at the dirty blonde slumped behind me, searching for her next fix. Probably needs to forget her abusive husband who took the kids, I deduce by her pale band of un-tanned skin on her ring finger and nicotine yellow-ed fingernails.

The fire escape is more of a brick ledge with an un-assuring metal ladder duct taped to the half dismantled balcony. Unassuming. No policeman would ever expect an addict to be so desperate to escape through there. Except one. As my pale and hovers above the doorknob, it flings open to reveal the stoic figure of DI Lestrade. "Enjoying your holiday?" he smirks with a shadow of disappointment in his eyes. Not anymore, I'm not.

My cell is no better than the crack den, just smaller and a plastic crash mat in lieu of a distressed coil-liberating mattress found at the side of a motorway. And of course no crack.

"Visitor for ya, Holmes." Snarls the cockney guard, still fuming at what seemed an innocent deduction: what's so shameful about watching children's cartoons when you're a man in your forties unmarried with no kids- oh. I see. I know who the visitor is, and I prefer solitude over his jaw-clenching idiocy and over protectiveness. But still, might as well have some fun… It's not like I have much choice in the matter.

"Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock." I can already feel the bruxism attacking… "Honestly, brother mine. This is the last time I can face being called out of a meeting to bail out my little brother for attention seeking…"

"Poor Mycroft. You what takes my mind off of stress like that? A little bit of coke."

"This is no laughing matter, Sherlock. You leave me no choice."

"Oh god, Mycroft! What will you do? Set surveillance on me? Solve every case before me and spoil the endings? I look forward to your torment. Keeps the mind young."

"Shut up!" I've only seen my brother so angry on a few occasions, yet all of them were directed at him. "I cannot watch you kill another brain cell while you shoot up in some tip. You're moving in with us again. No questions."

"… Us?"

"Yes, brother mine." He smirks delightedly, savouring his brother's anaphylaxis on the perfect poison. "You're staying with mummy… And daddy… And me."

Fuck.


	2. Fraying

"We're here, Sherlock." Murmurs Mycroft, gently nudging me as if I hadn't been watching the entire journey out of bleak, detoxing eyes. I proffer my weak, track marked arm.

"Cigarette?" He tuts through his pursed lips.

"Sherlock. This whole situation is to get you clean…" He's hesitant, guilty. One more push.

"They're legal. I just need one… Please." I plead quietly, head flopping weakly to face him. Large puppy dog eyes flash and my brother hands it to me easily. I burn the cigarette right to the end, sucking out every last molecule of euphoria I can before the dry spell. Goodbye happiness…

"Sherlock!" Mum croons far beneath my height. Enveloping me in a ravenous bear hug, I feel her worry spilling out of her pores. "Oh my boy! You've lost so much weight. There's nothing of you!" Her open pink smile is stretched over a secret frame contorted into worry and her thinning grey hair falls about her face limply, unlike her once vibrant blonde curls. Another good thing I've tainted.

"And Mikey! So nice to see you… Still no girlfriend?"

"Ahem. No, not yet mummy" He squirms. Nice to know I'm not the only one feeling like my skin is crawling off.

We sit in the hearty living room, fire crackling and throw pillows expertly arranged. Why try to impress the junkie with interior design? Unless there's a cushion stuffed with coke, I don't think I'll notice anything in front of me. Mycroft's itchy presence is uncomfortably close and stirs up long deleted memories of a family he's never connected to. Photos line the many side tables in the room: Mum and Tim's Hawaiian honeymoon, Mycroft graduating university (three years early)… and…. That picture. I look away but like my favourite pass times it's addicting. My biological dad and her. They look so happy. It was taken on our birthday; her and my father are hugging outside a café in Italy. Her cheeks are pink and her teeth are shown in a wide smile. Our identical curly brown hair and piercing blue eyes look so much warmer on her. His arms are wrapped around her shoulders. My mouth feels dry. My vision snaps away to the floor as I notice Mycroft catching my gaze.

"She was beautiful, wasn't she?" he sighs wistfully.

"Who?" I duck out of the room. I can't handle it.

I run up the stairs towards my room. I need somewhere cool and un-coloured to clean out my mind. I pass her room. The door's ajar. Electric blue bleeds into my eyes and astronomical posters haunt above me. I enter. Her electric violin rests against her wardrobe door which is covered in band pictures and entertaining scraps of her vast magazine collection that reaches across the room on a bending shelf. Her deodorant and eyeliner is still littered on her bedside table and a lukewarm six pack of beer is in the incognito drawer. The bed. A wooden double. Still unmade covered in scrunched up galaxy print bedcovers. I climb in. I toss the cover of my head like the makeshift tents we made when we were young. It still smells like her in my purgatory. A shirt is tucked into the side of the bed. It was the one I gave her for our birthday. The one she couldn't find when she was packing to leave. Glow in the dark stars are laid out in every constellation I can think of and then some made up ones. I spot Sherlock's constellation, the one she made for me. My heart feels heavy and my throat lets sand fill in, drying my whole body. How could I let all my knowledge of space litter my mind when every time I recall it, I feel immobilised. Numb. For the first time in years, I allow hot, bitter tears roll down my icy skin and I bury my face into the scent of her.


	3. Lost

"Sherlock?" Ngh. The fuck? My head is like a gong being tossed down an elevator shaft. Piercing bright lights blind me- when did the lights get replaced. It finally dawns on me. This is not my room. Tubes threaded through my arms and a pipe shoved down my lungs do my living for me, I've already given up it seems.

"His vitals are holding steady and his breathing has evened out nicely… This does seem like an accidental overdose but we can get you a psych referral if you'd like, Mr Holmes."

"That is not necessary, thank you. Can you get us the discharge papers, Dr?"

"Of course"

I feel my brother staring at my soon to be corpse in dismay. He is disappointed, obviously. Even I am, how strung out could I have been to OD like this? I really am pathetic.

"Obviously close surveillance isn't working…"

"Maybe you should handcuff me to a minder…" I mumble around the breathing tube half asleep, too tired to think of a wittier retort.

"Sherlock. This relationship is getting to a point where it is too easily foreseeable that our bond is going to end abruptly…" I roll my eyes as my brother tiptoes around the concept of death. So mild. "I now this is the last thing you want. I know you'll be upset but I see no other way to make sure that your heart stays beating…" he trails off guiltily. He wouldn't… He can't…

"Mummy and I have phoned… him. He's on the next flight over… I'm sorr-"

"WHAT THE FUCK"

"Please don't make a scene—"

"Mycroft! You called my fucking dad!"

"I know you're still upset about her but—"

"Upset? Upset? I think you understand, brother mine! This piece of shit killed my sister!"

"Sherlock…"

"My twin is dead because of him." My voice shakes.

"Sherlock. It's not my fault mum and dad split up. It's not my fault that Sheridan decided to go live with him. It's not my fault that his prison friends decided to break in that night… No-one knew"

"I knew." I rip the tube from my throat, the burning sensation is a small deposit in the way of paying for my crimes. "She texted me the day before that she felt scared and unsafe. I got on train over… I went to find him… He left me in an alley with a broken eye socket unconscious and went to a bar as he knew full well that his 'mates' were breaking into his house looking for their money. He was a a greedy egotistical maniac…" I jump out of bed and slip my narrowing legs into my tatty jeans.

"Sherlock! We don't know what else to do! Dad knows about drugs and getting hooked. Please just let him talk to you!" His ashen face pleads, genuinely. Creases of worry hook under his eyes that I've never seen before.

Tossing the hospital gown on the floor and ripping out the IV makes me dizzy. I don't want to move. I want to get better here. But I can't. I need to leave before my past sneaks up behind me and strangles me anymore. I throw on a t shirt and run unsteadily towards the door. I can't listen to anymore. I can't think about my twin or our father without feeling an aching pain that floods my senses, overrides my brain. I need the drugs. I need to dose myself and pour water on the fire. Extinguish the feelings that make me want to scream. I need numbness. Why can't anyone understand me? I fling my exhausted body out of the doors to St Bart's Hospital into the road.

I can't find any air. I gasp for breath but an inferno suffocates me. My fingers are kindling, crackling beneath me as I collapse into the road. My heart beats so violently that I feel that it'll crack open my ribcage and spill all the carefully concealed feelings of worthlessness and depression out onto the asphalt for the world to see. People shout out me. I can't hear. I'm underwater. I hear nothing. I see nothing. I taste nothing. I smell nothing. I feel empty. My senses shut down and the last thing I sense is the cool metal grill of the speeding car that ploughs into my frail corpse.

I lie on the tarmac. Locked in my body. Perfectly still. How it should be. Blood caressing my ears, the crimson parade covers me in a veil. Calming. Erasing. And my heart is put to rest.


End file.
